Heavy: An American Memoir Literary Elements

Memoir

The action described in the memoir takes place in Mississippi starting in the 1970s till the present time.

The action in the memoir is told from the perspective of a first-person subjective point of view.

The tone and mood in the memoir is a neutral one.

The protagonists is the narrator and his mother while the antagonists are the white racist people with whom the protagonists get into contact with.

The major conflict is between the need for equality and racism.

The memoir reaches its climax when the narrator realizes that he has to better take of himself and to stop people from abusing him.

At the beginning of the memoir, the narrator describes how his mother had problems with being accepted by society because she was highly educated. This foreshadows the later racist events the narrator will have to deal with.

At the beginning of the memoir, the narrator claims that he and his family had a relatively easy life. This is later proven to be an understatement when the narrator describes how his mother and grandmother were sexually abused and beaten and how he himself was physically abused constantly.

One of the main allusions in the memoir is the idea that the white society is responsible for the demise of the black population.

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One of the most paradoxical ideas found in the memoir is the way in which the narrator's mother claims she is against violence while regularly beating and abusing her children.

A general parallel is drawn between educated black people and educated white people. This parallel is used here to show that even though the two groups of people were extremely alike when it came to skill and knowledge, the black people were treated as they were inferior.

Education is used in the memoir as a general term to make reference to superiority.

We have a personification in the sentence "those books spoke to her and pushed her forward".